Stray
by N.T. Embe
Summary: There are some things you can't talk about with anyone... except your enemies. - Kallen and Suzaku. Set in Season One, between Episodes 20-21. Author's Promise: This is the beginning of an interesting series.


**Title:** Stray

**Rating:** PG-13

**Theme:** Wavering

**Pairings/Characters:** Kallen and Suzaku.

**Spoilers/Warnings:** Oh, I'm sure you've all seen this far at least. If you haven't watched past Season One, Episode 19—there's at least one fair spoiler here that'll shock you. And a few more that'll throw you~

**Time Period:** Season One, between episodes 20 and 21.

**Summary:** It's hard to face the big questions, the greater decisions, alone. No longer will that be the case. I've…got you now.

**Word Count:** 2,200

**Dedication:** Cloud. When I say I hate you? It's because you make me realize everything about myself that I hate. Never stop. Someday, all this hate will fall away, and from the flames…hope and meaning will rise again. I DARE THE WORLD TO PROVE IT OTHERWISE!

**Disclaimer: **Code Geass is not mine…but you can't stop me from keeping what's in my heart.

**A/N:** I…am exploring something new.

. . . . . . .

"I don't know if what we're doing is right or not."

They were words spoken to the air, nothing else present to hear the doubt that filtered through her rough, emotional voice. It was low keyed and steady through the raspy quality it had picked up from the cooling of the seasons. Autumn was long settling in and a fragrant summer gone. Miraculously, school was on her mind. The simplicity of learning for the sake of building yourself up towards a future that entailed a career, a steady paycheck, a home and potentially family. Make one's self a woman of high standing, or effort and grime placed in all the seams of her work ethic. To become a noble married to considerable wealth and prestige, or be self-made and share the load with...

With what?

Eyes thrown to the skyline in the distance. Pristine, gleaming in the fading sunlight. A miracle of innovation? An example for the world to live by, work up to and imitate, so that it too might appear as flawless, as desirably complete and fulfilling as this. Her azure eyes narrowed.

"No, I will _not_ be married to Britannia!" she spat and lurched to her feet.

"Why do you say that?" a voice questioned lightly to the side.

The red-haired girl jumped and placed a startled arm over her chest defensively, jerking away from the voice before her wide eyes settled on the source. Immediately her gaze darkened and she threw her hands abruptly to her sides, fists clenching tightly.

"What do you want?" she demanded of Suzaku, who had appeared on the walkway. It was not like it was private property, but his presence here at such an hour seemed incredible. However, it also made sense... But she shushed the side of her mind that logically explained his duties to army and class council as his reasons for taking the shortest route between there and whatever gate he had entered by. To further her annoyance, he was being…polite.

"Nothing, Kallen," he said, an attempt to appease, by the softness of his honesty.

He gazed at her with an openness that made her intensely suspicious. Not long ago they had come off the Island of the Gods, and then Zero had come to his aid on the battlefield during the siege on Kyushu. Their identities had been revealed on that island, but no whisper of peace made on either of their sides. Their _true_ selves were not contained in the yellow and black school uniforms of Ashford Academy. They were dangerous, adept pilots of red and white that sought more purchase on the battlefield than in their efforts towards becoming mature young adults with fair grades and a career lined up ready for them to set their teeth into.

This was, in comparison, a game.

She laughed. Harshly, venom seeping into the sound. A look of surprise came over the brown haired boy's face, and at it she stopped the sound, now turning irate. "Then why don't you move along, Suzaku," she invited, her voice more than full of murmured threats and a barely concealed vying between aggression and a failed attempt to maintain a level of calm. "No one invited you to stop by and give your two cents."

"People that don't want to talk to someone, don't talk out loud to no one," he pointed out with a smile and, daringly, sat on the bench she still stood bristling in front of.

_God damn him!_ She glared at him and a string of curses ran through her head. Her fists tightened so that her knuckles were white against her black skirt. "Like you know anything about that!" she said, louder than she had intended and grabbed her bag from off the bench, whirling around and marching furiously off.

Suzaku just eyed her calmly, a touch of wideness to his eyes as she seethed and left him behind. It was somewhat amazing, seeing the difference between the girl she had portrayed herself as for so long, and this feral yet magnanimously loyal woman with fangs of more than one sort. He turned his head back from watching her and sat for a moment longer. He followed her old gaze and his duo, forest-and-olive colored, green eyes settled too on the line of the city.

Before he could trace what her thoughts could have been, the heavy intensity of purposeful steps made him look to the side. He was admittedly only a little surprised to find Kallen come right back up to him before dropping onto the bench heavily at his side and leaning in threateningly close, her hand gripping his arm with more strength than he would have attributed to her appearance.

"You have one question to answer." Her voice was low and carefully swift, vibrant with syllabic warning. Her eyes, carefully pallid as her expression when on school property, gleamed now in semblance of the sun, playing its ruthless rays on the equally unremitting ocean depths. "Do it without any lies or hesitance and I'll stop myself from carrying out the threats running through my head. Now, why haven't you taken me out yet?"

Suzaku, unflinching at the pain and strength of her serious concern, gazed evenly back at her, and the touch of a smile came once again to his face. "Kallen, you don't want to turn the school into a battlefield as much as I don't." He lifted his shoulders and arms faintly, a mixture of a shrug and a gesture of innocence. "I am not under the call of duty, to eliminate a classmate and friend. You are my opponent only when we face each other outside the limits of regular life."

The face ominously near to his wavered, and as he spoke, the jaw slackened and the eyes loosened. They began to search his face, cautiously at first, cued for signs of deception or false confidence. Then, satisfied, they still roamed his face, slower now, picking up on emotions, reasons—the meaning behind the words. The significance of what he proposed, what he had established in that moment—for she had silently accepted it before she even realized it—dawned on her and at last the fingers on his arm loosened and her eyebrows eased upwards.

At last eyelids fell and an almost relieved expulsion of breath gushed verbally from her lips. She twisted away, and pressed her back against the bench, slouching ungracefully. A hand covertly shifted to the side of her skirt and he suspected it was the weapon she always had on hand. But she did not reveal anything and after a long moment of silence, a sliver revealed once more the azure of her eyes.

"I don't think you can change things by following the rules," she said quietly. He traced her line of sight, but found she was looking away into nothing, and as his eyes returned to hers, she tensed visibly. "How can you expect things to change when you're just another person doing what everyone else is doing? It doesn't make sense! If you follow the instructions, you'll always get the same thing in the end. Only when you do something different do the results give you something else." She was sitting up straighter now, and her eyebrows furrowed in stark conflict.

"Is this why you said you wouldn't be 'married to Britannia'?" he questioned, letting her know he was listening.

She glanced furtively at him and then looked away. A tightness had come into her jaw from the way she clenched her teeth. Once more, the hand at her side curled inwards.

"I don't believe people work that way, Kallen." Her attention jerked back to him, her eyes dubious. He saved her the trouble of responding by offering her his thoughts. "People are never clearly defined. You can put two people together in the exact same situation many times, and each time they have the choice to respond differently. Nothing tells them what to do and what not to do other than themselves. So," he turned a little more towards her. "That gives a person the freedom to do a world of different things, even if they walk the same line a hundred people have walked before them."

She was staring at him, a look of comprehension and apprehension mingling on her face. She understood, yet she still held back. "Do you honestly think this slight difference is all it will take to topple Britannia?" she scoffed, resentfulness etching her voice darkly. Sarcasm and doubt filled her words. "Just because you're a nice guy doesn't mean the people in front of you are going to make way for your warm-hearted ideals."

"What about the people that come after me?" he asked provocatively.

"What about them?" she shot back automatically, still trying to grasp the logic of his method. Then, as he was about to speak, she held up a hand. A soft light shone in her eyes, and faintly, clarity began to consume their darkness. Her hand fell against his chest as though to continue to still him, although they both knew he needn't say anything else now.

Slowly. Very slowly, her head turned towards him, and even more slowly, her eyes followed. They stayed like that for a span and then she straightened abruptly again, for she had begun to sulk as she thought, as sank in her seat again as she did so. Now she looked at him intently, and began to voice her suddenly whirling thoughts. "They'll follow your example. One person at a time. They'll see your good will, they'll…learn to echo it. Then…before long…there will be nothing in the way of that and…"

Suzaku nodded and took her wrist gently, placing it on the bench as though to remind her. "And the laws will change with the people."

Kallen, withdrawing her hand with conscious embarrassment, nodded to mirror him, though her eyes and body shifted away from him again, wandering. "…it _does_ make sense," she admitted quietly.

"Kallen," Suzaku began, but the red-haired girl held up her hand again, stopping him.

"No, I know what you're going to ask now," she said, and her voice was settled. Determination had once more resumed its place in the unwavering figure. A small gust of wind blew against the two, chill autumn air rustling the army pilot's hair. As though the wind carried on it a secret message, the revealed Black Knight rose and grasped the handle of her school bag tightly once more. "I won't say I don't understand you, Suzaku," she said carefully, and the brown haired boy noted her words had the odd quality of the rehearsed. "But your way…" She shook her head.

Suddenly she spun on him. "How long?" And her teeth her clenched, her eyes stark and filled with a blue fire that no doubt ran through her very being. "How long will that _take?_" she asked him again, her voice rising. "While we sit here and have to pretend to be who we don't want to be. While our families suffer under the discrimination of poor jobs, cruel treatment by the lowest of filthbags that think they're _worth_ more just because of their _blood?_ We have to sit, and play nice, and wait…and wait…and _wait_, Suzaku! It's been ten years, and we're _still_ waiting!" she shouted, and threw her school bag to the floor.

Suzaku looked on her with shock and concern, his mouth opening slightly, searching momentarily for the words to comfort her. She trembled, half bent over, arms limply dangling, hair concealing her face as she stared at the evenly paved concrete walkway. "You lost your father by your own hands and decisions," she said lowly, and he jerked in tense surprise. Slowly her face rose to meet his, and her eyes were as cold as his were when he had revealed the truth to her in their isolation. "I never had a choice in the matter."

Leisurely she bent further and grasped the handle of her school bag, straightened and turned away from him. Without letting him say anything, her foot lifted, and she was soon stepping calmly away, back down the way she had marched with such anger before. Then the stones had only encouraged her to try to crack them with her furious steps. Now they were glazed by the eerie chill that gripped her body, as though every flame had been slicked with ice, concealed behind an impenetrable glaze that could not be melted through by the most intense of passions or shattered by the most cunning and violent of blows.

Suzaku stood slowly and looked after her, and the hopeful smile that whispered over his face was a miracle in itself. An empty gasping echoed in his chest where she had torn away a piece of his fearsome defenses, and so he knew….

One must have been left in hers as well.

. . . . . . .

_Suzaku, I will not let it happen ever again._

. . . . . . .

_Kallen, you are my enemy never._

. . . . . . .

Till we meet again, pilot.


End file.
